One day in 1981 there came a knock upon our door at 9 Thomas Street, Golden Grove. I answered it. There was a young, well-dressed, well-spoken Māori man there, who asked for someone whose name I didn’t recognize. He went on his way. Not so very long after, while we were out, the house was broken into, through the back door, and several things were stolen: money, clothes, a leather satchel, a machete. Of course I don’t know if it was the polite young man who robbed us but in my heart of hearts I believe it was him. We were about the same size and it was my clothes―a jacket, a pair of trousers―he took; my satchel, my machete. I didn’t mind too much about the clothes, and money can always be replaced; but those other two items were precious, indeed irreplaceable, and I still feel bad about losing them. Because, although I’ve said they were mine, they weren’t really. And, in a way, I should not have had them at all. They were my father’s and I had taken them from the parental home without asking or telling him; which I suppose is a kind of theft. The satchel, which I never saw him use, was made of several pieces of thick leather, sewn together, with a single flap with two straps upon it, which met two buckles on the body of the bag, and a looped handle at the top with which to carry it. It was in good nick and would easily have held a half dozen bulging foolscap files along with two or three text books; and I believe he bought it, or perhaps was given it, when his own father found him, after he’d left school, a place in a law firm. This was in Wellington in the late 1930s; Dad left Rongotai College, where he was Dux, at the end of 1938, and joined Morison, Spratt, Morison & Taylor. They were the solicitors who represented Todd Motors, where his father, my grandfather, worked. At the same time Dad enrolled at Victoria University College, as it then was, and began to study for an LLB. He also joined the Communist Party. Then, when his parents went on an overseas trip, in 1939, he took the opportunity provided by their absence to resign from the law office and enroll at Teachers Training College instead. And so the contents of his satchel would have changed, from law books to education texts; and, soon enough, must have begun to include student papers to mark or return. As I say I never saw him use it; he left it in the gardening shed with other things he had no further use for but evidently didn’t wish to discard: his khaki lemon squeezer hat, his two pairs of boxing gloves, the machete he must have been issued with when he went up to fight in the Pacific during the war. This was a black handled knife about two feet long, with a steel blade that curved up slightly at the end, and reposed inside a leather sheath which could itself be attached to a belt. It wasn’t ever very sharp and, like the satchel, I never saw Dad use it for anything. It lay in the shed with the other abandoned things. I don’t even know if it was wartime issue; just as I don’t know the precise history of the leather satchel. Nor do I recall exactly when I took them, or why I brought them with me to Australia. I think they may have had some value that was associated in my mind with a kind of masculinity I aspired to but did not know how to attain. Or maybe they represented some aspect of my father’s personality that he had lost or abandoned or, like his career in the law, just left behind. I hardly ever used the satchel either; just as I never used the machete at all; they were both tokens of something I didn’t really examine; until they were gone. When a thief steals jewelry, s/he doesn’t only take the artefact; its associations are also stolen, at least insofar as the future possessor of the ring, the brooch or the necklace is concerned. The same is true of my father’s satchel and his machete: their associations, with the law office in Wellington, with Training College, with his war service in Fiji and Tonga, in the jungles of Espiritu Santo and Guadalcanal, and at the Catalina base at Halavo Bay on the island of Tulagi, are lost to any future owner. I retain them; while I do not retain the objects themselves. There is a conundrum here which is difficult to interrogate; it has to do with the difference between what an object, or rather an artefact, is, and what it means. If I still had the satchel, would I oil it with neatsfoot or linseed, as I remember doing when I owned it? Would I clean the blade of the machete with steel wool, perhaps even sharpen it? Dubbin the leather sheath? Yes, probably. And in that sense, I suppose, they would have become like those precious things the people of Tanimbar keep among the rafters of their houses, wrapped in cloth, to be taken down on ceremonial occasions, anointed, caressed, perhaps even wept over; before being returned to their resting places. These may be beads of porcelain or figures made of ivory; carved tortoise shell combs or gold ornaments; if the latter, they might also be trophies of war. Called masa, these golden heirlooms have their own names and histories and are considered to be relics of the ancestors. I’m lucky, I suppose, on one respect at least. After my father died I inherited, legitimately, his walking stick, which had been his own father’s before him. It has a round, domed head inlaid with pieces of various New Zealand native woods; and marked here and there by the teeth of my dog, Mungo, who had a chew on it once. My father was shorter than I am, and so was his father shorter than him; if the length of the stick is anything to go by. I remember Dad using it, when he was old and frail and troubled by emphysema. He bought a blue rubber ferrule for it, so that the tip, which is worn, didn’t slip out for under him; and used to lean on it when he walked up the road to the Greytown Working Man’s Club for a drink; or from room to room in Arbor House, the retirement home where he lived out his days. I too have used it on occasion, when I sprained my ankle, for instance; and may, of course, use it again. When my next birthday comes around I will be the same age as my father was when he died. How many miles to Babylon? Three score and ten.
Isinglass 